Simizen's Mod Madness

[Simizen 1,098]

This thread is meant to hold various ideas that I've had in mind for mods. I decided to post them online to share them, and for keeping track of to some extent. Feel free to provide feedback to anything you like, or might be interested in working on. At the moment, however, I feel that this will take a few posts to fill out, so please refrain from responding until everything's done. And, hopefully, this is being posted into the correct location, but, if not I'll inevitably see where it ends up,

This is the current list of mods that I have in mind, and clicking each of the links will take you to the appropriate post. Please note, this is not in any particular order:

• Improved Civic Buildings Mod
• Industrial Update Mod 
• Department of Sanitation
• Aerospace mod
• Forest and Resource Mod
• Data Views mod
• Project 4K
• SSM/RSM
• general ideas

note: the last one isn't a "mod" but simply ideas that have come up that I think could work really well with other mods. Some of these may become mods themselves, but overall, they likely will clash with the mods they're intended to work with/be a part of.

This mod list also doesn't include a few lots that I'm interested in working on, however, they may still be posted at a later time.

All links to any other posts/comments I make in this thread for new ideas/lots will be added below, and updated accordingly:

• Industry Taxes
• [place holder]

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   

Updates:

+ 9 - 2 - 2025:

The sections for the Dependency Installer and the Folder Structure have now been implemented via the SC4PAC program. And with a significantly cleaner setup than I could've come up with. Feel free to continue reading through them for ideas and such, but all discussions can be had over in the SC4PAC Let's Write Our Own Package Manager topic

also added some new ideas that came to mind recently

[Simizen 1,098]

Improved Civic Buildings Mod (ICBM)

The general idea behind this mod, is to do a complete overhaul with the various civics buildings, both Maxis default, and with the many mods that have been added. Basically, think of @RobertaME's AMPS power grid mod. Where she redesigned the power grid to be more robust, and to unlock new buildings over time, a similar thing would happen here.

The biggest thing with the game, is the fact that the different lots that are in place, are all expensive, while covering a rather small area. While this is okay, especially from a developer's point of view, of trying to balance everything, it's proven to be difficult to properly work with, and for many players, not very realistic. There have been a variety of other mods attempting to fix this issue, and while they're great, I'm not entirely convinced that they're the best way to go.

Spoiler

The first thing to be addressed regarding the civic lots, is their coverage. The default coverage areas are incredibly small, and let's face it, real world lots of these types cover significantly larger areas. In one city I lived in, we had 2 police stations (really they were combination police and fire stations), and the city, if build in-game, would cover an area roughly 5 miles by 5 miles. Even with it's awkward shape, and sharing some resources with a neighboring town, we had 3 or 4 stations for complete coverage. Based on that logic, the larger police stations in the game, should reasonably cover the entirety of a default region (4x4 large cities, or roughly 8x8 km). Since this isn't really possible due to the game's design, I've worked out an alternative method, which attempts to retain some of the (theoretically) intended balance of the game, with the cost of the facilities.

• Tiny (or Kiosk): these lots will generally have a small footprint, and have the smallest service area. They should be limited to approximately a 125m radius (250m diameter). These are useful for those small and awkward spots that it would be rather pointless to place/build a larger version of. And, in the case of police, useful for any particular trouble spots.
• Small: generally larger than the Tiny lots (there can be some overlap), these have a radius of 250m (diameter of 500m). 4 of these should be used to cover the majority of a single small city tile, where the service rings begin to touch.
• Medium: these have a 500m radius (1km diameter), and are meant to be able to cover the majority of a small city tile. In this way, the smaller service lots become support lots. 4x these Medium lots, should cover the majority of a medium city tile, with the rings touching, like with the Small civic lots.
• Large: these have a radius of 750m (1.5km diameter). These should be large enough to cover a significant portion of the medium city tiles, if not the full thing. This size was made with a hypothetical 3x3 km city tile in mind, thus the slightly out of place size.
• Huge: these have a radius of 1km (2km diameter), and like the medium and small, should require 4 with the rings touching to cover most of the large city tiles. One of these should cover most of the medium city tile.
• Massive: these have a radius of ~6km. This is strictly so they can cover the entirety of the largest city tile currently in-game (unless a mod is capable of giving us larger sizes later).

These sizes are meant to be templates that we can pull from, to help unify the different services and make it easier to work with, without having 50 different sized coverage areas because we wanted to use 50 different police stations (or other civic lot). However, I must note that I'm not entirely sure if the provided sizes are worth having, as they may need to be adjusted (upward), to satisfy everything.

A note regarding the Massive coverage, is that this is meant to be limited to such things as the Fire Department Landing Strip, as it's meant to have an incredibly large area. These lots should also be locked away as a reward building, and tied to the city tile size. So, the idea is that, you shouldn't be able to access this at all, within the small and medium city sizes, but, you absolutely could in the large city tile. And, as far as I'm concerned, the Maxis default unlock requirements beyond this are fine. But those can also be debated on alongside the service areas.

I've labeled the Tiny ones as Kiosk, because there's plenty of lots that could fit this size, without being overpowered. There's a good handful of Police lots (Speed Traps, Road Islets, Traffic Stops, etc), along with a handful of other buildings. These are meant to be solely support lots, as their costs would begin adding up to the point, where it should be cheaper to go up to the next size, than to use the amount needed to provide the same basic coverage.

And, much like the Massive lots, the other sized lots are also meant to be generally locked away behind certain things. The idea here, is that the Large, and Huge coverage lots, would be locked away from the small city tile. This is meant to reduce the need to just plop 1 lot, and cover the entirety of the tile, and to help add more depth and planning to the game. This is also why their coverage areas are just large enough that the rings would either touch the edges of the map, or touch the rings of a neighboring lot. This design assumed an optimal city layout in a flat map. However, typical maps will not have this, and as such, the coverage areas of some of these lots would likely be enough on their own, to provide complete coverage for the city.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Spoiler

Unfortunately, to really complicate this, I've also had an idea to add to this, where we could have different sets of lots, based on play style. In this way, you'd have more variety, and a bit more strategy to planning out your cities, and to help make them feel a bit more real as a result. This particular idea is to supply Rural, Suburban, and Urban services.

• Rural: these lots would have the largest service areas, but have lower capacities. These would allow for much fewer lots per city tile, especially for those who like to build up farming towns. These would also be a lower cost as a result, to help out with those who like a more rural aesthetic.
• Suburban: generally these would be the default lots, which have been rebalanced by the above coverage areas
• Urban: these lots would have the highest capacities, but have smaller service areas as a result. These would require more lots, but would be better able to handle the demand in a much smaller space

The original idea for this setup, came from messing around with some of the schools, and realizing that I would like to have a fairly small school, but with a really good service area for my farming towns. And, while one is provided for those who like to utilize the SPAM mod, and just farming in general, it's rather limited in what it can do.

Unfortunately though, I'm unsure of how to proceed with setting up the lots, as I have managed to triple the amount of lots needed to provide for all coverage areas (now needs up to 18 lots per service type, versus the supplied 6 coverage sizes). Of course, I don't think all of these would be filled in, as I doubt you would need certain sizes based on the city type you're building.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Another part regarding this mod, was to work out updating the City Hall building. But due to the various other mods that have been made (originally my plan was to merge them together), and someone having fixed them, that's no longer the case here. I believe there are also a few other things that I would like to add to this mod, but they'll have to be added in as a later post (and likely cross-linked with this one), whenever I'm able to work out what the other ideas were.

 

An overall goal with this mod has been to try to make it compatible with virtually any major mod type. Currently, we've got CAM and SPAM as the two major mods, and of course, Vanilla, is the third major play style. So, in general, I'm interested in making this so that it could work out of the box with any play style, without conflicting with either of the two largest mods. If necessary, implementing some of this into CAM, would be a possible option. Though, I'm hoping to not intrude on the efforts regarding CAM's current revival project.

There are other concerns regarding this, such as slowing down some of the demand interest when players establish the initial Rural lots, so that the game doesn't outright force players to move quickly from farming villages into a sprawling metropolis. Though, these may only be solved with other modding aspects elsewhere.

[Simizen 1,098]

Industrial Update Mod

This idea came about after discovering Paeng's Industrial Facelift mod, and quite some time after I had already discovered @T Wrecks's Industrial Revolution Mod. Here, T Wrecks updated all of the lots to make them look better than what Maxis gave us, and additionally, he separated the different types into different zone densities, due to the nature of the game. So I-D and some I-M lots were placed in the medium density, and the rest of the I-M and all of the I-HT lots, were put into the high density.

Well, as it turns out, Paeng had in fact also provided for a general update to the default Maxis lots, giving them a much needed overhaul. Here he changed out their base textures, but generally kept everything else the same (save for maybe adding in an extra prop or two as needed). But, the problem with this, is that it will conflict with the IRM, as they've both altered the default Maxis lots. Additionally, Paeng never sorted his Industry types out like T Wrecks did.

This mod is meant to unify the two in some way. Currently it's been partially done, but it does still need some work. And, to complicate matters, it still needs to be setup to play well with the IRM. At the moment, I've managed to separate I-D into the medium density, and theoretically, have also done the same with I-M, and I-HT. Although, I am currently unsure of this, as a recent play seems to be showing that the I-D lots are still showing up in the heavy density zone.

Unfortunately though, with what little experimentation that I've done, I've discovered that you would still need a key file from Paeng's mod. So, it may result in either

• A: needing to download Paeng's Industrial Facelift mod, and putting the necessary file into your Plugins folder alongside my update, or
• B: supplying the necessary file in my own mod

And, I'm not entirely clear on how the whole thing is going to work out just yet.

If anyone's interested in seeing what I've done so far, just let me know further down, and I can supply the files I currently have.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Another part to this, was to try and rebalance the lots, so that they could have a better job supply. Many people like to run with the various job multiplier mods, and the goal was to adjust things so that you wouldn't need to have this. Of course, this can very easily conflict with CAM, and as a result, there would likely be 2 versions, a CAM-patible one, and a basic IRM compatible one. Of course, the CAM-patible one would also be IRM compatible, as there's a version of the IRM that works with the CAM.

Additionally, I would also like to adjust some lots, so that you could get better versions of them, as you progress. While I-D is generally pretty bad, many of these jobs in the real world, are much, much cleaner now, than they were over 100 years ago. And much of this came from improved education and technology. So, one aspect is to take some of the I-D lots, and relot them as I-M, with appropriate adjustments, so that they're not producing as much pollution (or even have the super dirty animations). And, in the same respect with I-M by moving some up to I-HT.

This part will likely be added later, and unfortunately, may not be possible in Vanilla. As such, this part may likely be a CAM only aspect. While I could theoretically pull it off for Vanilla, it likely won't be done in the same way, or at the very least, not as easily. In Vanilla, there's only 3 stages for all Industry types (Agriculture included), because of this, my initial plan of bumping them up to stages 4 and 5, isn't possible. Though, due to separating the types into the different densities, there may be a rudimentary method for pulling this off.

[Simizen 1,098]

Department of Sanitation

Much like AMPS, and the aforementioned ICBM, this is meant to be a garbage overhaul mod. The goal is to change things up due to the way the game's currently setup. Many players have issues regarding the default landfills, and how they eat up tons of space and money, and take forever to decompose so that they can be dezoned.

My goal with this, is to utilize the Lifelike Landfills by @apeek, though slightly modified, to by pass the restrictions regarding the landfills. The idea here, is to setup each tile as a landfill, with an appropriate capacity, and a relatively decent decay speed. In this way, players would be able to design their landfill however they would like, and not have to worry too much about it not working as intended, and be comparatively cheap.

As each tile would act as a landfill (or more probably as a recycling center or incinerator of sorts), it could be drawn out in any shape the player wants. With apeek's setup, however, they've made the bulldozer act as an incinerator, and of course, supplied the resulting air pollution. My intention, is to have it act like the rest of the landfill tiles, where there's some air pollution (it can be plenty windy around the trash), as well as some water pollution (due to leeching and such), but not so much that it would be incredibly damaging to the area such that nothing would want to grow around it.

Additionally, I would also like to update the Utility and Environmental Advisors with more dialog. Along with this, my data views for Air Pollution, Water Pollution, and Garbage would be recommended, if not outright packaged with this mod. The advisors would be updated accordingly so as to inform the players about the charts, and about the additions of the new landfill lots.

And a key aspect to this, is to just outright replace the Landfill zone, simply because it seems to be causing quite a few problems for everyone. Of course, work on the Landfill zone may also be done to help boost it's capacity and decay rate, so that they're a bit more manageable. Of course, there are a few other mods that I would like to bring into this, such as the SC3000 Style Incinerator by @cogeo, along with their charts, as well as the various trash barges and any other incinerators and recycling centers. This way players can have a better variety, so that they can utilize appropriate lots and methods for cleaning up their trash as they see fit, without it costing them so much money in the long run.

Of course, one thing I would like to do with this, is to be able to have both the modified, and unmodified versions of the Lifelike Landfills, so that players who still like to use the older ones can if they wish, but it wouldn't be a requirement, aside from the basic lot designs.

More work is likely needed, as the initial focus was simply to bring in and modify the Lifelike Landfills, SC3000 Style Incinerator, and the different data views and charts.

[Simizen 1,098]

Aerospace mod

Sadly I don't have a fancy, or good name for this, so, it just gets a generic title for the moment.

The overall goal with this one, is rather interesting, because, there's now yet another airport mod to add into the mix. But, the reason why this came up, is because I was struggling with the current custom airports, where you'd have to piece everything together, but, I also just didn't necessarily want such a massive airport filling up my cities. And then I realized that, virtually everyone's had issues with the Maxis default airports, with the common complaint being that they're too small.

Of all the lotting projects, this is likely the most ambitious. The goal with this one, is to replace the Maxis default lots with updated versions. Though, the mod would come with a Maxis blocker file, so you could still keep the originals if you so choose. In this way, you wouldn't have to worry about corrupting your save files or anything.

Every airstrip in the game, would be updated, starting off with the default airports, as those would be the most immediate. Though, the Fire Department Landing Strip, would likely be updated in the ICBM due to it's connection with the Civic lots. But, the intention is to upgrade the 3 airports to be slightly bigger, and would go as the following:

• Commuter: 30 tiles long (up from ~16), and renamed from the original Landing Strip. The Municipal airport would be utilized as the base to build off of
• Municipal: 40 tiles long (up from ~27), and uses the International airport as the base
• Regional: ~50 tiles long, and renamed from International

From this, each one would actually be made to work with each other, to make the much larger International airport. Both the Commuter, and Municipal airports would be ~10 tiles wide/deep, and the Regional airport would be about 15 tiles wide, and would incorporate 2 runways, a shorter runway, and a continuous runway that goes completely to one edge of the lot. The purpose of this, is to allow each of the airports to connect, to make a much larger X (or +) shaped airfield, for the crosswind landings/takeoffs.

From what I can gather, most of this is viable utilizing Maxis only textures/props. However, I believe that certain parts would likely still need the UAP from the SC4E site. This is because, I do not believe that the cross pavement for the landing strips exists within the default Maxis texture list, but I could be wrong, as I still need to look through it, to see what all is there.

This is not, in anyway, meant to be an overhaul mod to replace the airports with something better, in the same way as the various other airport mods have already done. This one is simply meant to replace the current Maxis lots, with something better, but not overwhelming, for those who may feel that the originals just aren't working for them in some way. If anyone is interested in a much more detailed, and more realistic airport mod, then definitely checking out the others over on SC4Evermore, is a better option. Again, this particular mod, is simply meant to improve the default airports, and to, effectively, make them modular, while also taking advantage of the upgrade feature within the game, so that they can be more robust, than what we were originally given.

Originally, this mod was also supposed to incorporate the Area 5.1 airstrip, the Airforce Base, and the Fire Department Landing Strip, as all being part of the larger modular setup, but I realized early on, that it just wasn't going to work out that way. However, I would still like to do such a thing with both the Area 5.1 and the Airforce Base, as a separate modular airfield, if players are interested in having a longer air strip (or a smaller cross strip). Though, i believe these are also setup such that you're likely to only get the one or the other, and not both, at least, not without cheats, or a separate mod file that allows them both to coexist.

As for the Fire Department Landing Strip, the goal with this one is to lengthen it to ~20 tiles, and probably make it a few tiles wider as well, as watching the animations for the plane taking off and landing on it, just doesn't look right So, it too will be updated to be a bit more robust as needed, and will override the Maxis default Fire Strip as a result. But, as mentioned before, this one is likely to be put in with the ICBM, rather than kept here, simply due to it's nature. So while work on it may occur alongside the rest of this Aerospace mod, it will simply be updated over in the ICBM when it's completed.

[Simizen 1,098]

Forest and Resource Mod (FARM)

Creative name I know

This one's been floating around in my mind for several years now (since like, 2016, 2017? icr), and the idea has been to try and update the agricultural zones to make them more robust. Currently, the I-AG just consists of typical farms. And, while that's great, it feels somewhat incomplete. The original goal of the mod was to expand the zone options for I-AG, by giving it low, medium, and high density options (in conjunction with this, Industrial would also gain a low density option). Giving it these 3 densities, would allow it to grow newer kinds of "farms".

These "farms" are basically other forms of resource extraction. This would include such things as mining, oil drilling/pumping, logging, etc. And, in fact, it was the logging aspect that initiated this, thus why it starts as Forest, cause the original idea had started off with trying to figure out how to set up a logging "farm". Shortly after, I realized that the others could be utilized too, giving us some rather interesting designs and such.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to really pull this off, as part of the idea would be to have rather large farming zones for these. And, that means being able to lock some of these behind a size requirement, and I'm not sure of how that could work (at least with the traditional methods), to be able to only have these options when the zone is large enough, but never have them when they're smaller. This would allow people to still have regular farms, but not have to worry about them becoming some random oil, or gas wells in the middle of their city.

And the size limitation, is part of where the different zone densities kicked in. Here, the different densities would allow for the different resource industries to pop up as needed. This way, you could have regular farms in one, forestry in another, and the mining/drilling in another. And as needed, others would be mixed in, or just generally these would all be merged, and spread out throughout the densities.

This was also the first mod in mind, where it would be ultimately compatible with Vanilla, CAM, and SPAM. And the original idea behind this, was that it would have access to the first 3 stages in one section, allowing everyone to use it, regardless of their play style. So even the Vanilla players could still have something fun to enjoy. Then, it would add the next few stages, to make it compatible with SPAM. And to be complete, you would want both parts. And then the final part would cover the last few stages as established by CAM. In this way, you could download install all 3 parts, and be able to enjoy it, while not having issues due to incompatibility with that of the other styles. Granted, you'd be missing out on some of the other lots, but there was interest in making the others compatible with both Vanilla and SPAM as needed, and therefore result in different files to swap out. This would allow players to have access to all of them, but then change it out according to their preferred play style.

This one definitely still needs work, but any ideas for this are appreciated.

There's a few other notes that go along with this, but they'll be found in the later post for my General Notes, due to some overlap with other mods (notably CAM).

 

Edit: Forgot to add that this ended up with an alternate name at one point. Unfortunately most of the notes regarding this mod are on a currently inaccessible hard drive, and as a result, when trying to remember the name of this mod, I gave it another one temporarily calling it Other Resource Extraction (ORE), which also fits this. Though, I'd rather stick with the current FARM name as it's a bit more accurate to what it is. And if there's enough work to justify it, ORE can easily become it's own thing at a later date. But, in the meantime, both will be held onto, until sufficient advancement with this mod has been made to warrant releasing the other name.

[Simizen 1,098]

Data Views

This one's already partially completed, as I've altered the color schemes for the 3 primary pollution maps. But the goal of this one was simply to update all of the data views, to match that of the SC3K views, as well as to make some of the buildings stick out more, both on the charts, and in the city when in that view.

I did work on an alternate version for the Fire data view, but it's not working the way I'd like, so I haven't posted that one yet. If anyone's curious, I can share the different files I've made for it, and y'all can take a stab at it; and of course, I can explain my goals with it. If it works out, that's awesome, if not that's fine too, I just wanted to see if I could do something better than the default.

Part of this design, was also to attempt some way to condense both the Data Views, and the Charts and Graphs, as the logic behind those made absolutely no sense. You can check out my Data View consolidation here, (behind the spoiler), and the Charts and Graphs version will be below.

Unfortunately, when attempting to consolidate the Charts and Graphs, it didn't come out quite as cleanly as the Data Views consolidation, so, while this will be a great base template, it's still in need of work.

Spoiler

+ Crime:

pretty much the default. Maybe something extra could be added like, charting out the types of crime would be neat, but not much else that I could really think of

+ Traffic and Commute:

basically, these two charts would be merged, and then you'd either use check boxes for everything, or a radio button to flip between the two options, and then the check boxes would just be used to view the traffic. And, realistically, it probably needs an update due to the NAM utilizing GLR.

+ Utilities:

really this just merges the Power and Water charts together while using either check boxes or radio buttons to view each. And, honestly, this one could probably get away with check boxes, as I don't believe there's any particular conflict with either. Garbage isn't included, only because of the amount of stuff included in it. It's possible it could be condensed, but would need some experimentation.

+ Pollution:

Yep, just like the Data Views, all the different pollution options can be consolidated into a singular chart. Just select a check box to see each one and call it a day. No point in having 4 different charts for it all.

+ Jobs & Population:

left as-is due to how extensive it already is

+ Garbage:

as noted above, this can generally be left as-is. The mod SC3000 Style Incinerator by @cogeo includes some minor adjustments to the chart I believe, and these would be incorporated as well.

+ Education: *

This would include both the Education level chart and the Education by Age chart. And a simple radio button could work to flip between the two.

+ Population Health: *

includes both the Population by Age, and the Life Expectancy charts. A radio button could work here. It's also possible more data could be added, but not entirely sure what.

+ Resident Average Income:

unfortunately, there's not really anything to couple this with, so it remains on it's own until a later time, should we come up with either a category to merge it into, or we figure out more data types to draw to this (possibly income per job type?)

+ City Finances:

This one really bugs me actually, why is this spread out across two charts? Basically, this merges both the City Income/Expenses chart, and the Funds chart. Cause realistically, it's easier to flip a check box on/off to view everything, rather than to waste space trying to explore the different aspects when they're both very closely related. And, honestly, the Funds chart is completely worthless on it's own, without also viewing the Income/Expenses chart.

+ RCI Demand: *

while there's more info added in some extra charts, this one honestly fills up the entire screen on it's own, so can generally be left alone.

+ Mayor Rating:

same as the Resident Average Income chart, not much can realistically be done here, so it'll just have to sit on it's own. Only real addition that could possibly occur is like, the city's general aura and such.

+ RCI Total: *

this is an additional chart that was added in the GraphModd. V2 by @Tropod. Here they added Radiation, Extrapolation, and RCI Total charts. This would condense the RCI Total, and the Extrapolation charts, so there would be less space eaten away by extra charts. Unfortunately, I'm not really clear on what's going on regarding the Extrapolation chart, as it's meant to map out the city's RCI in some way.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

As noted by some of the above sections, a chart mod has been introduced, and the goal here is to consolidate it into the current charts. As Tropod has added Radiation as an option (which actually makes sense), I've suggested that it be condensed into the Pollution chart, so as to make it easier to locate.

For the categories that are Green Starred these may end up reverting back to their original views, due to the fact that the bar graphs fill up the window, which eliminates any potential room for check boxes and radio buttons.

For those that are Blue Starred, these might potentially be condensed, if the associated problems with the bar graphs are solved regarding the Health, and Education charts. RCI already fills up the screen, so this may not be possible. But, if it is possible, then we can likely merge both the RCI Demand and the RCI Total charts.

Additionally, Tropod has added extra data points to some charts via their mod, and those would also be brought into this. I believe they add more information to things like the Power, Water, and Garbage charts. And, as seen above, both the Garbage and Utilities categories have been colored to match, as they're all under the Utilities Advisor.

As I've been running with both Cogeo's and Tropod's mods, I may have added more information from the start than what comes in the Vanilla game, so it may be a bit confusing as a result (mostly in regards to the Garbage and Utilities charts).

But, as the charts are still a bit of a mess, work will be needed to adjust these, and as such, due to the way some of these are currently setup, we may not end up with as many condensed charts as shown here.

Also, we may need to add something to the game to explain what the Extrapolation chart is actually about, because it is being tracked in the game by something, but I'm unaware of what's doing the tracking, or what it's all in relation to (maybe neighbor connections?). I did have a city show a spike for it at one point, before returning back to zero, so, it is working, just no idea of how it's working or what it's actually in relation to. Any help and information here is greatly appreciated.

[Simizen 1,098]

Project 4K

This is an interesting one for sure, cause it didn't originally start off so big and complicated, but it's since evolved into this, and, yeah, expect a massive text wall, and for that I'm sorry. But, I am trying to keep things behind spoilers, cause it's already quite a bit to go through for a lot of people, so, at least this way, it'll be easier to navigate and read through things.

To start, this is effectively 3 mods in one (sorta). And, really, it's less of a mod on it's own, but more, an overall project regarding multiple mods. I've done what I could to break things down into their respective sections, all of which will be behind spoilers to keep the size down as much as possible (until I hit whatever potential character limit there is on a single post, )

Spoiler

This mod is the one that ended up starting off the Project 4K concept, though, that was not it's original intention. The goal of this mod has been pretty simple and straightforward, and that is to bring forward all the lots in the previous SimCity entries.

Basically, the idea is, to grab all the buildings from SC3K and bring them forward, and to have them match as closely as reasonably possible to their original designs, while being in SC4. There would likely be some overlap of course, but essentially, you'd start with the name, and if there were duplicate names, you would then look at the models of each. If they matched, then you could move onto the next lot. If not, then you'd make the 3K version in 4.

The same thing, would of course, be done for SC2K, where you would bring forward the default lots, into 4. And, of course, if possible, the same thing would be done with the SC1 lots, though, these would be far fewer, as there aren't as many unique lots.

Of course, you'd end up with some extras, like you get statues in 2K and 3K, but neither seems to match those of what we have in 4 when your city's doing really well. Besides, SC3K has some really good art, why not bring some of it forward?

Additionally, this would mean that things like the Arcologies from 2K would also end up getting brought forward. These would take quite a bit of work, and will likely be added later, but they would certainly be interesting to see/have in the game.

I would also add all the default templates from the SC3K BAT, as I feel that those would be great to have in the game as well. Plus, many of these designs would help to expand on some of the skyscraper lots that we need to be able to fill out the various CAM stages.

Also, I really love the Haunted House in SC3K, and would love to have that back. And of course, since the scales are different we can see how things work out, and maybe give them a better look in the process. Another thing to add, would be the 3K advisors and petitioners. The idea here, is that the 3K advisors all had some really good personalities, and it'd be neat to have them in the game. Players could either have them as advisor replacements, or as extra sims to pull from in the My Sim mode.

I've also been wondering if maybe it's possible to introduce random petitioners into the game, or if there needs to be a dedicated advisor for some of the dialogs. But, I feel like it could be done, if nothing else, to use the Sims from the My Sim mode, and if that works, then we can definitely bring forward the advisors and petitioners from SC3K and put them in there.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Spoiler

This idea came about, cause, well, if you shorten SimCity 4, you naturally get SC4K, much like you would with 2K and 3K. However, i realized that in this day, we can legitimately have 4K graphics with a lot of games. And that's how this one came about. So, it's a bit of a combination of things cause of it.

So, the idea here, is that we could start trying to make 4K lots and textures. Of course, the game's limited to HD at the moment (afaik anyway). But the intention is to update everything in the game, to have access to SD, HD, and 4K textures, models, etc. And partly to be ready for any OpenSC4 projects that could potentially come up. Originally this was planned out before any work on one had been started.

So, by having SD, HD, and 4K textures and models, we could have the option to select which ones we want when the open source version is released. While the Vanilla deluxe game would be strictly limited to SD, and some HD stuff, we could still use those in the base game as needed, but enjoy the 4K versions in the open source version.

This of course, would also be applied to all of the lots and such being brought over from SC2K and SC3K. So, yeah, would be quite the project for sure.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Spoiler

This, is the monster that's made me delay this post for a hot minute.

This project is an unintentional by product of the previous two entries here. But, basically, the goal with this, is to generally fix the mod selection as a whole.

Overall, the intention is to pick a standard mod, and make everything work with it, and with each other. And to do so in such a way that it feels seamless. While historically, we've had CAM and SPAM as options, this particular mod/project, would mean picking one side over the other finally, and then getting everything to work accordingly. Though, it's likely that even the one that's been chosen, may very well come down to being altered quite a bit from that of the original, thus creating an extra play style.

The reason for this, is because so far we've got NAM, which acts as a sort of expansion pack to the game on it's own. But we don't have anything like that for the rest of the mods. We've got IRM, which is great for industry, and AMPS, for the power grid. But nothing to really unify everything. Even so, AMPS itself, still has to rely on a good double handful of other mods to even work properly, and IRM has a whole host of dependencies to download and install in order to use it. While I'm not expecting these mods to be reduced to minimal dependencies, what I'm looking for, is an ease of use situation, in which a player could download a set of dependencies, and not have to worry about the fact that they've got to grab 50 different ones, for each mod. Simply that they could download the dependencies, and just call it a day.

To help establish stuff that's compatible, it would be given a "seal" of sorts, establishing what's been accepted. NAM, would actually be the exception to this rule, simply due to it's nature and how large it is. And it's not expected to follow along with some of the standards at the start, simply because of the amount of work involved with it.

But, basically the requirements of what would be "4K Certified" are:

• has SD, HD, and 4K textures/models
• is compatible with CAM (the intended choice of this mod)
• doesn't conflict or override other mods in the project
• cannot be pay walled behind things like Patreon, Ko-Fi, etc
• is Submenu compatible (latest addition)

And, while not a requirement to being "4K Certified", it is a by product of being such, and that is the fact that any mod added into this, must be kept up and publicly available. Basically, this means that modders would effectively give up control (to some extent) over their mods. So, even if you left, your mods would be left behind so that people may still access them, and not be pay walled, or removed for any reason, except in either:

• A: the mods/admins of Simtropolis, or SC4Devotion (Now SC4Evermore), and related SimCity community sites (SimPeg site for example if it was still up and running), or,
• B: EA/Maxis directly intervenes and requests a mod be taken down or removed for any reason

In this way, it prevents any possibility of the key mods from breaking, just because a lot or other mod in the background was removed.

However, some exceptions to this rule would still likely exist, and honestly would need to be debated on to ensure that it's in keeping with the rules and the community and such. The graphics could potentially go all the way down to SD quality, but they would be given a different seal of sorts, to show that, while the lot/mod is still compatible, it doesn't fully match up to the requirements. This is to avoid having really great mods that many people use, from being left out of the project, simply because the graphics are below standard, but everything else is working perfectly. Because of this, these mods will end up with 1 of 3 seals, showing their compatibility. This is also to allow people to continue to make mods with lower quality graphics if they're interested in getting something up and running, but may not necessarily be able to provide higher quality textures/models.

Generally, anything that's been pay walled, isn't particularly acceptable. However, accepting donations to continue working on the projects (so long as the projects themselves are free), would be perfectly fine. But, again, this whole thing would need a group of people to debate over to determine the state of things.

Which of course means that this project absolutely requires a team, and as such, means that there's effectively a board/committee to oversee the project, and to clear things for approval.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Spoiler

In addition to all of this, other things would also need to be done, outside of the basic modding. A handful of programs are also meant to be added, to help everyone out with a variety of things.

Terrain Generator:

This app is meant to work/act like the SC3K Terrain Generator program, as well as implementing features found in SC3K itself, with it's built in terrain generator, and the various options from the SC2K terrain generator, which can be found in the SC2K main menu.

While there is an okay terrain generator online, this one is meant to let players pick from a variety of options, and to add to it, they can pick other aspects, that would then be pushed out to the regional `.ini` file. You would also be able to select the appropriate city sizes and whatever pattern you'd like from it as well.

After creating the region, the player could have it pre-rendered. And, while similar to the SC4 Terraformer app, where you can get a variety of colors and such, this would actually utilize the same basic textures and logic that would be found within SC4 itself. As it's a standalone app, it can also be made to handle multithreading, thus allowing for a significantly faster rendering with fewer issues. This way, when everything's done, and a player imports the region, it'll be setup and ready to go, without needing to deal with the really slow import system.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Lot Editor 2.0:

I've already brought this up in it's own thread a while ago, over here, but it's still a project worth pursuing. Since it has it's own thread, any discussion on it should be kept over there. But, in general, all the ideas remain the same (though, maybe tweaked slightly due to the advent of DLL modding).

To add to the notes, however, it would also be great to have access to other pieces of lot information that we could edit. Such as the cost to build (for ploppables), the different pollution types, the type of lot (landmark, civic, etc), monthly costs, etc. Currently these options can be accessed via LEProp, which is great, and very useful, but, unfortunately, it seems a bit cumbersome to work with. The app itself, is incredibly streamlined, but the issue comes in that in order to make a custom lot in the game, you effectively have 2 routes you can take. You could either:

• A: use the Maxis Lot Editor, followed by LEProp, and then SC4Pim (a Maxis app) to sort everything out, or,
• B: use either the iLives Reader or PIM-X apps to do everything the others can do, and possibly more

But the issue regarding those last 2 apps, is that there's a significant learning curve. While they're powerful, and that's great, the issue is the barrier to entry for those 2 apps is rather high. While I'm able to sit there and experiment to some extent with them to figure out what to do (along with reading through a couple technical manuals and a bunch of tutorials), the issue remains that, the average player won't be able to just sit down and spend 6 hours attempting to follow a couple of books, just to build a brand new lot. And, unfortunately, not everybody has the time to do so.

While I understand that we don't want to necessarily over simplify everything, our goal should be to make it quite easy to pick up and learn. Mastery can be done over time. So, this app would simply condense a handful of programs currently to avoid the constant switching of apps, but would also be fairly easy and straightforward to learn and use without too much trouble. And, given that it would also have some limitations, as mentioned in it's own thread, it wouldn't be bogged down when loading tons of stuff into memory, as then it would only load a handful of things by default, and only load the rest when called by the app after the modder's selected them.

To some extent, this may seem a bit like it's a replacement to that of PIM-X, and honestly, to some extent it is, but in general, it's not actually meant to be. It's simply meant to bring everyone up to the same level when they're starting out, and then, if they so choose, they can open up things like PIM-X, and not have issues with how complicated it is, cause they'll already be aware of certain things that they're looking for, after having made a handful of lots in this app.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Pre-Loader:

Realistically, I'm not sure what to call this. But this app would effectively run prior to the game, so that it can speed up the loading process. Basically, the idea here, is that when the player clicks the game icon, this would run, using the same basic code as that of SC4, and then promptly load everything it needs to load, and generally in the same order, so that when the game itself actually does launch, SC4 can be told that it's already been loaded.

Since this can be made externally, and simply connect to some kind of hook in the game, it can very easily utilize modern hardware to boost the loading speed. Now, you could have access to quite a bit more RAM, as well as more processors and such. Additionally, it can be set to register how much RAM is required to load up everything SC4 needs, and then record it for future use, to help boost it's speed. And, of course, giving it an appropriate buffer for those moments where it may require more RAM due to extra mods being added.

Likely this would rely on the ability of the player to select certain options, with a minimum amount of RAM that's required. And it can also be set to register what kind of mods are already in the plugins, such as NAM, CAM, SPAM, AMPS, etc. so that it can prep the amount necessary for each mod ahead of time.

Of course this means that we may effectively have to revert to using a launcher again, but at least this time it'll be considerably more robust. In theory though, this could be merged with the game's shortcut so it can run a basic script that could access this app ahead of time, allowing SC4 to load considerably faster than before.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Auto-DatPacker:

Pretty much what the name of the app is. The purpose of this, is to run at start, DAT Packing everything to help speed up the game. I personally have no clue how DAT Packing itself works, as I've not done it myself, other than effectively combining everything into a single file for the game to load. But the idea here, is that the app would auto-DAT pack everything necessary, so that it stays up to date, in the off chance that you've added/removed a bunch of mods. In this way, it would always stay up to date, no matter what happens, and there would be no worries about everything being loaded up properly.

Coupling this with things like the Pre-Loader would of course mean that there's now an incredible boost to loading times, such that they'll be pretty minimal.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Spoiler

This basically covers a bunch of the stuff that I somehow didn't go over previously. And I feel it's better to just leave some of it separate.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Patching:

But to start, one of the key things regarding this mod has been to find and collect all of the various bug fixes, patches, etc, and merge them into 1 file (or a set of files depending). Unfortunately (fortunately?), however, @CorinaMarie and @Cyclone Boom have already started work on this, in their ModdPack O mod.

Of course, overall, the goal is to basically merge all of them together, and with the advent of the DLL modding, this also means merging all the DLL mods together, to reduce the amount of files needed to get the game to run properly. The three key files that are often provided with these mods are perfectly fine, as you get the initial `.dll` file, along with it's `.ini` file, and a `.log` file. The problem comes up when you have 5 or 6 of these mods, as you now have 3x the amount of files as a result. And while merging all of these is great, it won't merge any of the optional files. Or, at the very least, they wouldn't be merged into the overall bug fix collection, but possibly with each other for convenience. If the project at any point deems a handful of these optional mods as being necessary, then they would be merged together (assuming more than 1), to reduce the clutter within the folders.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Dependency Installer:

basically, the idea behind this is, to just have a singular installer capable of adding in a variety of dependencies. As a mod is created with new dependencies, these new dependency files would be added into the list for the installer. In this way, a player simply has to download the latest installer, and then run it, and it will install all dependencies. This way there's almost no chance of there being a missing dependency save for the building models that may be used by other lots. At which point, figuring out what's missing will be significantly easier to do.

Of course, it's possible we may just need an app that can phone home and do periodic updates, much like the now obsolete SC4 Launcher app. It's possible we could just also hi-jack this app and use it for dependency installation and even DLL patching.

If an app is made for this, then we could probably also incorporate some aspects from the LEX Dependency Tracker, where it was able to track what's been downloaded for a given mod. Here, it would simply refer to a look up table, and if anything's missing from the current plugins folder, can prompt the player to download and install the necessary items. Additionally, the look up table can be updated regularly as players run it to ensure everything's working properly. So, the player could either hit a button for "Update Installer", it'll check for any updated look up tables, to ensure that everything's together as needed. And if the player added a new mod, they can hit a button for "Scan Plugins", which would then check for updated look up tables prior to scanning the folder to ensure that everything's linked up properly. Of course, when the "Update Installer" option is selected, it would simply update the entire app (or really any parts that are needed), and not strictly the look up table. Just the look up table itself would be updated in the process to ensure everything's still working as intended.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Spoiler

Folder Structure:

This one is interesting, cause it's just weirdly problematic. While players are typically allowed to have whatever folder structure they want, we have the inevitable issue of, basically, beating around the bush, each time we're trying to help out a fellow player. No two plugins folders are identical, and that's understandable, but it's at the point where, nobody can go: "remove file x from folder y, to get z issue fixed". Most times we're taking a random guess, and generally hoping that it works. Many times this does work, but sometimes there's a bunch of back and forth involved, so having a consistent folder structure would be key.

Another issue regarding many of the mods is the necessity for them to load in a particular order. There's a good handful that require that they're loaded up first, and about 3 to 4x that, that are interested in being loaded up last. In fact, so much so, that multiple "Z"s have constantly been added as a fail safe to ensure that they are loaded last, only for it to still fail in several instances due to others with the same "Z" labeling mentality to occupy the same level or higher. Which to me, is just completely ridiculous and unnecessary.

There of course, have been a few proposed solutions, and mine will be added into the mix, but realistically, a uniform method should be made, where many of the items in the Plugins folder are in the same spots each time. My method uses the same setup as that of the in-game menu for lots and networks. Meaning that you get:

• Landscaping
• Zoning
• Transportation
• Utilities
• Civics

Additionally, you'd have an extra one or two before the Landscaping folder, and another one or two after the Civics folder. Each could be numbered accordingly, so that everything could be sorted out quickly and easily. In this way, we can then have some mods that need to be loaded up first, in the very first folder, and those that need to be loaded up last, in the very last folder.

From there, I also break down each of the folders into their appropriate sub groups. Such as Utilities having Water, Power, and Garbage as folders, and this would allow for quick sorting, as stuff that appears under these menus, would then appear in each folder as needed. So, the setup would be as follows:

• 0 Dependencies
• 1 First
• 2 Landscaping
  • Flora
  • MMPs
  • Terrain (ground and water textures, etc)
• 3 Zoning
  • Residential
  • Commercial (service)
  • Office
  • Industrial
  • Agricultural
• 4 Transportation
  • Roads
  • Highways
  • Railroads
  • Miscellaneous
  • Seaports
  • Airports
• 5 Utilities
  • Power
  • Water
  • Garbage
  • Telecommunications
• 6 Civics
  • Police
  • Fire
  • Education
  • Health
  • Landmarks
  • Rewards
  • Parks
• 7 Overrides

This way, when lots/mods of a certain type are downloaded, they can be easily sorted and found. However, the biggest issue would come in with the Dependencies folder, as it's meant to hold the various textures, props, and models, that are used for other mods. Sorting these out is still needed, and would need a much more robust system to ensure everything's taken care of properly in this folder.

Additionally, since we're able to supply installers for some things, having a general installer for setting up a common folder structure could be doable. Though, realistically, this would be needed whenever a specific mod is added, and identifying which key mod a player uses would be the most difficult part to work with, unless it's one of the key bug fix mods

A similar (but likely more simple) folder structure should also be used for the game folder plugins, to keep the key files there organized as much as possible. Whereas the documents folder plugins can be more in-depth with it's design.

 

[Simizen 1,098]

Street Side Mod (SSM)/Road Side Mod (RSM)

This is an interesting one. And honestly, I'm having issues of which name to actually run with, but basically, it's an additional mod to run alongside the NAM.

It's also a rather extensive mod, as it's meant to add quite a few lots to the game to improve the way cities look, and even to some extent, to account for certain features of the NAM, where other mods don't. This has nothing against the other mods that don't account for the NAM, simply because I don't believe certain features that some of these mods provide, were known at the time of their creation, or that even these features were around at the time in which they were made.

The file I have these notes on, ended up becoming rather long and extensive, as the original goal was to simply start off with the Maxis default lots, and then later on, provide extra lots as needed. But, essentially, how this mod works, is that it's meant to utilize many of the rather smaller Maxis lots when they're placed alongside the roads/streets when they start to curve, or become any of the FANs.

The initial goal, is to use the 1x1, 1x2/2x1, and the 2x2 lots of various types, and to give them overhanging textures, and in some cases, make them into TE lots. This was inspired by the Filler Parks for NAM Curves, where some parks were made, to fill in the awkward gaps that came with the newer network curves. Here, players would have access to many of the different parks, as well as a variety of Civics and Utilities lots, which can now help to fill in the gaps, when and where they're needed.However, there are some limitations to this mod. While not limited by game mechanics, these are simply rules I've put in place for logical reasons, as it some of these would make no sense even in real life (though, yes, I'm aware of how awkward, broken, and convoluted the real life logic is regarding these structures). So, the lots that cannot be added to this are:

Spoiler

• Windmills; they're often incredibly large, and there is a Windmill mod that scales them up, and as such they're not allowed here either. The exception is the smaller, vertical, helix design, that may be something like 1x1 or 1x2 in size. But the horizontal fan version as supplied by Maxis is a no-go.
• Educational lots; because, really, are we sure we want people trying to learn to get run over? But, also, we're typically trying to keep schools in some out of the way places to avoid the heavy traffic
• Large Lots; basically stuff 3x2/2x3, and 3x3 and up, wouldn't really be used, except in certain circumstances. I've actually got notes on some of these larger lots being used, but don't expect things like the Large Fire Station, or Large Police Station to be used in this mod.
• Medium Lots; this includes many of the 2x2 and 2xN lots. Some of these will likely be used for this mod, but the others won't be. I will likely have to elaborate quite a bit more on both these and the Large lots
• Houses; pretty much any ploppable home. Yeah, we can generally do these in real life, but trying to do this for the game is incredibly difficult, and until we've figured out how to break the grid via the use of DLLs, this basically won't be an option (same thing goes for the growable lots)
• Small Power Generators; many of these won't be added, due to some practical reasons. In the real world, this would be incredibly dangerous to have on curves and such, and complete with some careless drivers, can very easily result in fires and power outages. Not to mention many other safety concerns. This means that generally anything AMPS related is safe, with a few exceptions.

The primary focus of the lots that are allowed to become street/road side lots, are the Parks and Plazas. Some other lots, such as Kloudkicker's Transformer Lots, small, and a handful of others, like the Police Kiosk, and various bus stops and subway stations would also be allowed in this. The complete list of Maxis default lots that would be used is below (sorted according to their respective menus):

Spoiler

• Transportation:
  • Bus/Subway Hybrids
  • Subway Stations
  • Bus Stops
• Utilities:
  • Water Tower
  • Water Pump
• Civics:
  • Police:
    • Kiosk
  • Fire:
    • Small Fire Station
  • Health:
    • Small Clinic
  • Rewards:
    • Small Statues (Male and Female)
    • Medium Statues (Male and Female)
  • Parks:
    • Green Spaces:
      • Open Grass Area
      • Small Park
      • Flower Garden
      • Medium Park
      • Large Park Green*
    • Gardens:
      • Community Gardens (no fence)
      • Community Gardens (light brown picket fence)
      • Community Gardens (small wooden fence)
      • Community Gardens (small white fence)
    • Plazas:
      • Open Paved Area
      • Small Plaza
      • Medium Flower Garden
      • Medium Plaza
      • Large Flower Garden*
      • Large Plaza*

The lots with the star ( * ) next to them, are generally the exception to the above rules. Due to them being parks/plazas, these 3x3 lots can be added, as typically parks are used to fill in some awkward spaces in real life city planning. The goal of course, is to utilize the size, and not to make them larger than necessary, so a 3x3 park, could be trimmed along one side/corner to accommodate for the FANs and curves. By making some of these tiles part of the road/street networks, when they're plopped down in appropriate spots, they will create a seamless look between the networks and the lots.

Spoiler

Part of this idea came up from trying to figure out how to make the Filler Parks for the curves a bit more efficient, especially given that in some instances, you're forced to demolish nearby structures if there's already something there. Here, these lots are meant to allow traffic through, and so they can now occupy a much smaller space as a result.

Of course, other mods and lots are acceptable, as I previously mentioned @Kloudkicker's Small Transformer Lots, as they're a great example of what could be used to fill in the awkward shapes from curves and angles. And, of course, it's not limited to them either, as there's a variety of small civics lots, some speed trap lots, and of course, the many parking lots that could be updated to work with this mod.

Due to the size and nature of this mod, while it's meant to work alongside the NAM, it's also meant to be used separately, as I feel that attempting to incorporate this into the NAM would end up making it quite a bit larger as a result. Since it's primarily relots, and not anything extensive in regards to traffic (save for the Bus and Subway lots), I feel that it's safe to keep separate, rather than attempt to merge this into the NAM proper, especially since it's not meant to be an override for it either.

Of course, adding to this complexity, is the fact that there will likely be multiples of some lots by default, due to the various textures being added, especially when attempting to match to that of the various sidewalks and plazas.

And, with the recent addition of the Submenu Mod, this one will absolutely require that mod in order to be used. Though, I believe there's been an adjustment somewhere that allows for lots to still be used without the need for the Submenu Mod, which may make this less of a requirement. But, even so, all lots being added to this mod will absolutely need to be given appropriate submenu locations for those that do use the mod, as this will inevitably extend the lot menus considerably.

 

And for anyone wondering, no, this does not, nor will not, override the RTMT mod. The reason being that these are two entirely separate concepts being utilized. This mod is meant to help decorate the sides of the roads to help fill in those rather awkward gaps, whereas the RTMT is meant to push the Bus Stops, and Subway Stations, onto the different road networks. That said, coupling their use would likely result in some interestingly designed cities. The only real overlap between these two mods would likely be the inclusion of the Bus Stops, Subway Stations, and the Bus and Subway Hybrid lots, but again, being street/road side lots, this shouldn't impact the RTMT at all, especially given how many people are often using both the default transit lots and the RTMT mod in conjunction.

If the mod gets too large however, it's quite possible that it would end up being broken down into smaller chunks, to avoid overloading the STEX (and SC4E) servers, as well as to make it easier for people to download, should they not have the greatest internet speeds. I may be sitting on a fiber net connection, but I know not everyone is so lucky, and may be stuck with some rather old school dial-up connections.

[Simizen 1,098]

General Notes

This section is just meant to throw in all the extra notes and ideas that I've got. These can very easily affect CAM and SPAM on their own, without being a part of any of the previously mentioned mods. And, in some instances, may very well be ideas that could be added to these two mods. Of course, given everything going on in here, it's quite possible that they'll be brought up again elsewhere in the forums, at least, in relation to other mods and such. But, we'll see how things go from here.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Spoiler

Farming:

While many ideas have generally been covered in my previous entry for my FARM mod, this is for the information I've found regarding some mods, and some ideas I've had regarding them.

Vanilla farming stops at stage 3, often with the horrendously ubiquitous Pedriana Plants lot. This is often solved via the use of either the Pedriana Plants Killer mods, or the Even Stage Farms mod. Personally I rather like the Even Stage Farms mod, as it allows everything to grow.

SPAM, however, bumps the stages up to 5, and attempts to follow the real world agricultural classifications:

• AG-1: Private
• AG-2: Family/Partnership
• AG-3: Co-op
• AG-4: Corporate
• AG-5: Processing

In SPAM, they've also eliminated the requirements for Power and Water on the first 3 stages, allowing players to grow these farms without issue for a while. Of course, SPAM also utilizes the demand for I-D and I-M to help feed into the later stage farms. And I honestly like the initial setup to some extent, as here we've got something good to work with, regarding the 5 stages. Of course, I do feel that the Power and Water requirements should be adjusted, but those will be explained later.

CAM, on the other hand, extends each of the different stage limits to 15, 15, and 7 (in 1.0), or 10 (2.1). In this mod, they've adjusted the farms to be more resilient to educational and technological improvements, and I believe, even to pollution and traffic to some extent. And more research will be needed to figure out where the newly made 2.5 sits in regard to these alterations.

But I would like to point out, that I'm not too sure of the 10 stage limit. Simply because, at least with Vanilla and SPAM, it seems that you can realistically cover a variety of farm types and not have issues. Past that, maybe one extra stage could be utilized if you wish to start mixing the smaller farms in with the larger farms to give more variety, but not much can really be done beyond that. And even then, while others have made mods to take advantage of the extra 3 stages, it seems that even those aren't quite as robust. Though, I must admit, I've not actually made it far enough into the higher stage farming and CAM to really be able to say definitively how these work out.

But, the general idea here, is that both CAM and SPAM have adjusted the various stage caps based on local provisions. CAM's capped everything past stage 3 by water requirements (meaning that you still need power for them, but to get to stage 4, you'd need water), and SPAM has nerfed both the power and water requirements up until stage 4 (meaning that to get stages 4 and 5, you would need both water and power).

My interest here, is to see if it's possible to merge both CAM and SPAM, by keeping as much as (reasonably) possible of SPAM when bringing it over to CAM. Of course, I know there's some efforts going on into making adjustments to both to get them to play well with each other (and the general idea of how that's being done), so these ideas I have might not be implemented. In bringing the SPAM farms over, I've had a couple of ideas:

• bring the SPAM farms over as-is, where all 5 stages occupy the same 5 stages in CAM, or
• bring them over, and attempt to spread them out among the 7 original stages of CAM

I have notes, where I attempted to spread everything out across the 7 stages, and effectively each would still get their own stages, with stage 1 on both being the same, and SPAM stage 5, would be moved over to CAM stage 7. The only mixed stages that I could work out, was CAM stage 2, with a mix of SPAM stages 1 and 2, and CAM stage 6, with a mix of SPAM stages 4 and 5. But, ultimately, I don't feel that this works like I would want, so this would certainly need to be adjusted as needed if this idea was worked into CAM.

Another part to this, is that I believe all stage 1 farms should be set to have no water or power requirements. The idea here, is that historically, farms have worked without either for a long time (though, they would still need quite a bit of water in regards to crops and livestock). So, for them to require both being supplied by the city, seems a bit ridiculous, especially since personal wells/pumps were often installed and used. And we can even see that houses in the game are capable of being built without the need for water, so it would only make sense for farms to be the same way (though I believe they're already exempt from the water cap from the start). With the removal of the power cap on stage 1, this would allow players to fill up an entire city tile with farms without overwhelming their budgets via the use of power plants. Of course, coupling this with AMPS would also work out quite well for those interested in gradually building up and improving on their power grid.

 

Additionally, I've made a simple mod that I tested out, where I've removed both the Power and Water requirements for stage 1 farms, but also another file for the stage 1 homes. This is something that I think would be an interesting route to take with both CAM and SPAM (should they implement it). Because this would allow players to fill up an entire city tile as they'd like, before needing to build up a power grid. And, historically, cities and towns have lived without power and water for quite a while, so it would certainly make sense. And with many players being interested in an Old West, and Victorian era style game play, this could work out really well for others. I do still need to share these files, but I have no idea the extent of the effects (such as, what would happen in a previously established city/region).

It's also likely that the residential lots may need to have a higher power cap as well (maybe up to stage 3, but certainly not exceeding it), to allow for some slightly higher density lots to grow. And, certainly debates should be had over this, as it could drastically alter the balance of the game and potentially create some interesting issues further down the line as a result.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Spoiler

Lots:

A couple of minor mods I've been trying to work out, are some lots.

Taxi Company:

One is a taxi company lot. It's meant to be a Commercial Service lot, and it would come in a few sizes to choose from, and would be growable lots. The concern here, is that I would like to have it produce taxi automata to drive around on the streets, but not entirely sure if growable lots are capable of doing that. The goal with this, is to also supply a couple of different stages to allow it to grow in various areas based on local demand. So, there would be a few open lot variants, and a couple of low to mid rise versions where they're W2W lots when a city starts to become more dense over time.

Bus Depot:

A similar one is meant for a bus station of sorts, representing the more cross country style of busses. In this way buses could still be used, but they're not the typical city busses that players are often plopping around their cities. Basically they're the equivalent of the classic Greyhound busses. And just like the taxi company, if automata spawning is possible, I would like for this lot to also be able to provide a custom bus automata (this is to help differentiate them from the default city busses).

NAM DOT:

this is an interesting one, cause I've had an idea for this for a while now, but it seems that someone's already working on a DOT lot. Unfortunately, I don't have all the notes for this, so, I'm not entirely clear on what all this is meant to cover, just that the current notes I have state that it's meant to supply information on various networks impact on the city. So, likely a way to cover the use of each of the different vehicle types, road types, etc, throughout the city.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Spoiler

Advisors:

nothing too extensive here, notes wise, I just would like for all the advisors to have more personality, and more things to actually say, and not have 99% of it run through the City Planner, with the occasional note from the others (outside of their greetings). And maybe make the environmental advisor a bit more palatable, and not an umbrage (or Umbridge, either way).

The general goal, is simply to have them explain a bit in detail, some of the city ordinances, and to occasionally provide links to various lots over time as needed. Especially as players begin to unlock them. This way they're a bit more helpful, and not just there.

Another part, is to also have some share similar messages, where the city is in need of certain services/lots. This way, you may get a message from just 1 advisor, and it's meant to show you that you've reached one particular threshold, but then when you see both advisors saying similar things, it would inform you that you're getting too close to a threshold that would begin to cause problems for the city in the long run.

An example would be with something like garbage piling up in the city. The Utilities advisor would pop up and let you know, that way you can begin to plan things out (or just ignore it for a bit longer). But then when the Environmental advisor pops up, she'd inform you that it's beginning to cause problems, and to address it sooner, rather than later. And if left alone for long enough, the Health advisor would pop up explaining that there's too many sick sims in the city, as a result of the garbage piling up and getting out of hand.

I don't expect multiple advisors to comment on everything of course, but it would be rather interesting to see. This way, if a player happens to forget to set up something (say due to a disaster, or some other thing taking their attention), then they'd get another notice informing them to address it.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Spoiler

SimNation Deals:

Yeah, kind of a cheat, but, honestly, I miss having the neighbor deals from SC3K, where you could just dump garbage off the map, or import endless power from a neighbor. The idea here, is that you can do it with some nameless/faceless city off the edge of the map in the region, and you wouldn't have to worry about certain things. Though, I'd probably also have this limited in such a way, so that you can't utilize chain deals. Or, if they are used, that they're limited (maybe a max of 2 or 3 cities out, depending on region size).

 

Additionally, having access to other cities for trade over water routes would be wonderful. There's been plenty of times where I've wanted to send garbage to a "neighbor" elsewhere on the map, but am unable to due to a lack of a proper connection. Even though both would have seaports, trade would only be successful with a direct neighbor.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Spoiler

Modular Lots:

some people have seen my general requests periodically for these, and to some extent these do exist in some way, but I'd still like to have these for various services in the game. Partly to improve on things without it being a complete annoyance. This idea can easily be applied to various other mods, as well as on it's own, which is partly why this is kept separate.

One particular aspect, and I think the general trigger for it for me, is that having modular power plants would be incredible to have. Basically, we know that the default power plants are just bad, cause they're small, and you effectively need 20 coal plants to power a full metropolis, before you can eventually unlock things like the nuclear power plant and fusion plant. But, another issue, is the fact that we've also got some rather large power plants as well, and they can get rather expensive to build.

So, the idea here, was that we could take a power plant (like the Large Coal Power Plant by @dannyd1993), and then we could break it down, into smaller sections. From here, you could have say, 3 or 4 sections, and then over time, as players need more power, can add another section. And, if they really want, could extend it into a ridiculous monstrosity. But, in this way, they'd still be able to pay for the upkeep of the plant like they would normally if it were a singular lot, but not need to worry about it, until it's necessary to have a complete plant for it. This would also bypass the nonsense of the default plants, and just having to spam them across the city, just to keep everything powered up. And, the same idea, could also be applied to the smaller plants, so that you could build them as needed, and then have a bigger lot, before upgrading to the bigger and more powerful modular plants.

The same basic idea would also apply to other lot types too, and not just the power plants. In this way, you could set aside space for a school, for example, and then over time, build it up to provide a higher capacity over time. And to some extent, players already have to build some of these lots directly next to each other (or very close if not directly), and rather than plopping down the exact same lot over and over, players could have a more uniquely designed school, through the use of modular lots.

Potentially this idea could extend to a variety of other buildings, but likely it would only really be for parks (which is already done quite well), and the clinics and hospitals. Of course, the only other major one that could benefit, is the airports, which is already covered under the UAP, and even my own proposed modular airport above.

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~  

Spoiler

Aerospace:

yeah, kind of an extension to the above stuff, but more specifically, this is pulled from the UAP mod. Basically, the idea is to have Zepplin/airship automata within a city. Would really only work when you've got an airship landing pad of course. But it'd be pretty cool to have these behemoths move around the city/region. Additionally, I'd love to just have access to the airship stuff, without the rest of the airport packs, lol.

And, of course, if there's a way to get the Empire State building to work, that'd be pretty cool too. As someone managed to make some weird mod for an airship mooring at the ESB, though from what everyone can understand, it's just a seriously convoluted lot, lol. So, the current setup is simply to just plop the ESB and a random airship nearby to get something that looks like it's functional, more than anything.

 

[Simizen 1,098]

Spoiler

 

!!NOTICE!! --PLEASE REFRAIN FROM REPLYING UNTIL ALL OF THE ABOVE POSTS HAVE BEEN FILLED OUT--

There is a lot of information I still have yet to type up, and at least one section may end up spilling over into other reply posts later. And, unfortunately, I have stayed up way too long trying to work on this. So I will do more tomorrow when I am able.

 

When I am done, I will update the original post, along with either this one, or a later one as needed.

 

 

[Simizen 1,098]

Alright, so, I think I'm actually done with everything, but, now my brain is fried. And I might go find some bacon for the side, lol

Save for one of the ideas above, feel free to discuss stuff below. Just, don't expect to be able to go through the full thing in one sitting, it took me 2 days to get everything here sorted out.

So, just pick a thought you might be interested in, be careful with any potential rabbit holes, and feel free to reply with any thoughts and ideas if you'd like.

And, of course, if anything gets extensive enough, it'll likely be pulled into it's own separate thread, and hopefully so will the original post with the idea (or just the section regarding it), and then any links can be updated as needed.

And I typically have no shortage of ideas, so, I'll inevitably add more here later on when they come up (if they're not already being posted elsewhere in other topics, )

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

14 hours ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

Just, don't expect to be able to go through the full thing in one sitting,

/me read it all in one sitting.

Very detailed ideas you have. I'll follow the topic and maybe comment as individual aspects come up for discussion.

One thing I'll mention is: Yes, you can certainly attach automata generators to growable lots. The Maxis Farms are one example using OG 0x1912 iirc and then when Raymond made the two Tractors for me, I added them to that group and restored the Lua. (The original generates pickup trucks, but Maxis disabled it before shipping.)

[Simizen 1,098]

oh, that's awesome!!!

Now I gotta go find some good bus and taxi automata,

Oh, I'm curious: how does the automat work exactly? Like, does it pick up on which side of the road it drives on, or does anything need to be added to inform i that the road side has changed? Cause while I typically run with the default RHD, if anyone wants these lots, and they use LHD, I don't want them trying to drive down the wrong side of the road,

Also, I have no idea how you would've managed to keep your attention for so long reading through everything; that's a power move right there

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

Oh, I'm curious: how does the automata work exactly?

It comes in three parts. There's a generator and then a controller written in Lua. The controller can call more than one generator if it wants to.

Here's the code I restored and tweaked for the farm vehicles:

Spoiler

generator.farm_out =
{
   automata = { "farm_vehicles" },    -- create farm vehicles
   count      = 1,
   rate       = 1,                    -- ...X times per...
   rate_scale = RateScale.PER_DAY,    -- ...game day (Cori change from PER_MINUTE to PER_DAY - 2020.08.01)
   max_count  = 1,                    -- (Cori change from 2 to 1 - 2020.08.01)
      
   -- generate at random distances between 5 and 15 meters away.
   radius = { 5,15},
      behavior = {                 -- behavior is always expressed as a table of tables, since there can be more than 1
         {  
            state = BehaviorState.DEFAULT,
            timeout = 30,
            final = true,
         },
    },
      follow_roads = true,
}

-- Finally, create an occupant group with attached attractor & generator
occupant_group.farmland =   ---- this is the building group name
{
   group_id = "0x1912",     -- Set this as an Occupants Group in the Building Exemplar
      controllers = {
        "farm_out",
      },
}

Then the third part is in the exemplar for the automata itself (the one that references the S3D model files) there will be an OccupantGroups entry and that is also 0x00001912 so that's how they get married together.

And looking thru the exemplars, I see that I restored the the 0x1912 to the growable Maxis farms myself. (They removed that before shipping.)

 

1 hour ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

Like, does it pick up on which side of the road it drives on, or does anything need to be added to inform i that the road side has changed?

It picks that up. For those that use roads, et. al. they will have a follow_roads = true setting and that tells it to obey whichever drive side is set in the Automata Tuning Exemplar, but also there is a Layer Filter. I altered that so I could have the Subway Tunneler as part of my Construction Crew when building surface roads. (There's prolly a picture of them somewhere if you are curious.)

[Simizen 1,098]

oh nice!!

I'll definitely have to look at that when I deal with my lots again

[TheMurderousCricket 5,055]

My dream is to have "SimCity: Reelism" - a mod in which every 15 minutes a set of three slots would shuffle randomly and affect what happens in the game.  Each slot could be grouped to affect visuals, gameplay or simulation variables.

For example, you could end up having a monochromatic screen, ridiculously reduced maintenance costs and unexplainably high traffic for 15 minutes.

Then, you could have and LSD-colored city, reduced mouse speed, plus city garbage decomposing 10x faster and so on. 

Would have been very complicated but fun!

[JoelMk2 332]

On 1/6/2025 at 7:06 PM, Ryuu Tenno said:

Forest and Resource Mod (FARM)

Hi! 

I have been thinking about farms, and I wonder if we have some similar ideas. I haven't posted anywhere else yet about this and this seemed like as good a place as any. 

I was thinking about how to gain more control over farm development and different kinds of 'primary industries'. Why? At the moment if you zone for farming you get a random allocation of different farms (main lots and field lots) in growth stages. I use SPAM at the moment which contains field lots for corn, wheat, tomatoes, hops, grapes, pastures and they grow in a mixed pattern.

To me this doesn't always represent the real life pattern of agricultural development where the choice of crops and farming systems varies depending on landscape, soil, elevation, climate, etc. Some areas might have a predominance of one crop (e.g. wine regions where grapes are the predominant crop and little else is produced, or plains that might have huge expanses of wheat cropping, or areas where pasture-based farming of cattle or sheep is the main activity). 

I also wanted add forestry to represent plantation forests (e.g. pine forests that are grown for producing various products including paper, construction materials/timber, etc). Plantation forests are also being used as part of carbon farming/emission offsetting in some places. You wouldn't expect to see this very often in the same area as vegetable crops though. Vegetables would be cropped on flat, fertile soils while forests can be planted on hills and more remote areas. 

How? I have yet to develop or test any of this but my idea was to look at using the Building Styles DLL mod to create building styles for different agriculture/horticulture/forestry types (e.g: Pasture, Vegetables, Grapes, Fruit Orchards, Forests, Corn/Maize, Wheat, Grains). I would then re-mod existing I-R buildings/lots (maybe SPAM and its addons to begin with). And maybe create some new ones (e.g. farm fields representing forests - these don't currently exist AFAIK). 

The modding (I think) would involve altering the existing I-R buildings so that each building only spawns a single farm field type, and allocating that building to the relevant farm-based building style. Many of the existing farm buildings currently spawn a variety of field lots (at random) so this would (I think) involve creating duplicates so that each instance links to a single field type. This would make it possible to control the growth of the farms and include or exclude any types of crops you don't want to see in a given area. 

Perhaps this could also be used (with development of the right buildings/lots) to enable growable mines/oil extraction. I don't really have a vision myself for how that would look from a LOTting perspective. 

I am not sure whether your wider concept is possible (effectively I think you are proposing separating Industry and Ag/Resource into two completely different zone types and adding higher-density resource zoning). But perhaps my ideas would enable some of the outcomes? 

[Simizen 1,098]

32 minutes ago, JoelMk2 said:

(effectively I think you are proposing separating Industry and Ag/Resource into two completely different zone types and adding higher-density resource zoning)

yeah, that was actually the original intent that I started off with a few years back. There's been some interest in attempting to expand on the zone types in the game if possible, but atm they're stuck staring at the code to sort out if anything could be changed on it. Currently we're limited to a handful of zones (13 or 14 i think?), and they all seem to be hard coded. If there is the ability to change out one or two, we could possibly see some expansions, namely, an additional Light Density Industrial zone. But, I don't know what the options are beyond that currently.

But, generally, if it's somehow possible to just add a handful of extra types, yeah, giving both Industrial, and Agricultural their own 3 densities would be the goal. This would then allow for extra farm types as mentioned above.

But, for the moment, we'll have to assume that's not possible, and simply work out how we want these extra farm types to fit into the game. And for me, that may very well rely very heavily on CAM (or a modified version). Since CAM's added extra stages to each zone type, then we could probably take advantage of them for the extra farms. But, of course, there's the overall limitation of trying to get only a specific type to show up as needed, and not have either a complete mix (as both CAM and SPAM allow, which is great for default farms), or have them show up in some awkward manner that would require demolishing and rebuilding the farm types.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And, yeah, these sound like they could work with my idea. I mean, mine's currently limited, as I can really only think of a handful of extra resource types to "farm". Currently the list I could come up with would be:

• Trees/Forest
• Rock Quarries
• Oil/Gas
• Coal
• Metal

I mean, I'm sure there's others, but I wouldn't know what they'd be honestly.

That said, you did bring up a great idea that I think could actually fix a lot of this pretty quickly: the Building Styles DLL.

This thing's already being used to give us an optional way to activate W2W lots, which was part of the original idea behind separating Agriculture and Industry when I had first come up with it.

Spoiler

 

Basically, a couple plans were made with the extra zones, following the IRM design:

• option 1:
  • Heavy: High Tech
  • Medium: Manufacturing
  • Light: Dirty
  • Very Light: W2W
• option 2:
  • Heavy: High Tech + Manufacturing
  • Medium: Manufacturing + Dirty
  • Light: W2W

 

But, with the introduction of DLL modding, and the fact that we can flip through building styles as needed, we could probably pop these extra lots behind a building style option.

49 minutes ago, JoelMk2 said:

You wouldn't expect to see this very often in the same area as vegetable crops though. Vegetables would be cropped on flat, fertile soils while forests can be planted on hills and more remote areas. 

How? I have yet to develop or test any of this

Additionally, we've got the Moisture Data View as an optional chart currently (though preliminary work is being made currently to see if the Data Views [and possibly charts, idk yet] can be condensed to free up some space, which may make it a more permanent option for people). And with this chart, it shows the location of where the ground has the most/least water within a city throughout the year. So, we could easily set it up so that certain farm types could potentially grow on areas that have a certain amount of water on them (or a rough average), and then other types could grow on the drier spots.

The catch of course, is that it could possibly rely on quite a bit of coding/programming to get it to work properly. And that will take quite a bit of effort to pull off for sure.

Granted, the whole point of this thread was to pop out my ideas, and then teams could be made for each thing, to help move things along much more quickly.

54 minutes ago, JoelMk2 said:

Perhaps this could also be used (with development of the right buildings/lots) to enable growable mines/oil extraction. I don't really have a vision myself for how that would look from a LOTting perspective. 

I believe there's already some lots for things like oil wells/pumps currently, so those would likely require a simple relot to get them to work with this mod. Also, i believe someone's figured out a way to give Agricultural lots all 3 building types that the typical Industrial zones have (Anchor, Mechanical, and Out lots), meaning that if we can tap into that, we could easily adjust some of these lots to work as we intend, rather than to have them just spam the same handful of tiles over and over again like we get with regular farms. Though, to some extent, this is likely to occur regardless.

 

And I do like this, and I greatly appreciate your reply! I'd absolutely love to see this be a thing for sure. And, of course, if you've got any other ideas to add to it, feel free! There's not too much going on with most of my mod ideas currently, as most are still in a concept state. But, working out how some could be done is definitely providing a boost.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

4 hours ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

yeah, that was actually the original intent that I started off with a few years back. There's been some interest in attempting to expand on the zone types in the game if possible, but atm they're stuck staring at the code to sort out if anything could be changed on it. Currently we're limited to a handful of zones (13 or 14 i think?), and they all seem to be hard coded. If there is the ability to change out one or two, we could possibly see some expansions, namely, an additional Light Density Industrial zone. But, I don't know what the options are beyond that currently.

But, generally, if it's somehow possible to just add a handful of extra types, yeah, giving both Industrial, and Agricultural their own 3 densities would be the goal. This would then allow for extra farm types as mentioned above.

But, for the moment, we'll have to assume that's not possible, and simply work out how we want these extra farm types to fit into the game. And for me, that may very well rely very heavily on CAM (or a modified version). Since CAM's added extra stages to each zone type, then we could probably take advantage of them for the extra farms. But, of course, there's the overall limitation of trying to get only a specific type to show up as needed, and not have either a complete mix (as both CAM and SPAM allow, which is great for default farms), or have them show up in some awkward manner that would require demolishing and rebuilding the farm types.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And, yeah, these sound like they could work with my idea. I mean, mine's currently limited, as I can really only think of a handful of extra resource types to "farm". Currently the list I could come up with would be:

• Trees/Forest
• Rock Quarries
• Oil/Gas
• Coal
• Metal

I mean, I'm sure there's others, but I wouldn't know what they'd be honestly.

That said, you did bring up a great idea that I think could actually fix a lot of this pretty quickly: the Building Styles DLL.

This thing's already being used to give us an optional way to activate W2W lots, which was part of the original idea behind separating Agriculture and Industry when I had first come up with it.

  my original W2W ideas (Reveal hidden contents)

 

Basically, a couple plans were made with the extra zones, following the IRM design:

• option 1:
  • Heavy: High Tech
  • Medium: Manufacturing
  • Light: Dirty
  • Very Light: W2W
• option 2:
  • Heavy: High Tech + Manufacturing
  • Medium: Manufacturing + Dirty
  • Light: W2W

 

But, with the introduction of DLL modding, and the fact that we can flip through building styles as needed, we could probably pop these extra lots behind a building style option.

Additionally, we've got the Moisture Data View as an optional chart currently (though preliminary work is being made currently to see if the Data Views [and possibly charts, idk yet] can be condensed to free up some space, which may make it a more permanent option for people). And with this chart, it shows the location of where the ground has the most/least water within a city throughout the year. So, we could easily set it up so that certain farm types could potentially grow on areas that have a certain amount of water on them (or a rough average), and then other types could grow on the drier spots.

The catch of course, is that it could possibly rely on quite a bit of coding/programming to get it to work properly. And that will take quite a bit of effort to pull off for sure.

Granted, the whole point of this thread was to pop out my ideas, and then teams could be made for each thing, to help move things along much more quickly.

I believe there's already some lots for things like oil wells/pumps currently, so those would likely require a simple relot to get them to work with this mod. Also, i believe someone's figured out a way to give Agricultural lots all 3 building types that the typical Industrial zones have (Anchor, Mechanical, and Out lots), meaning that if we can tap into that, we could easily adjust some of these lots to work as we intend, rather than to have them just spam the same handful of tiles over and over again like we get with regular farms. Though, to some extent, this is likely to occur regardless.

 

And I do like this, and I greatly appreciate your reply! I'd absolutely love to see this be a thing for sure. And, of course, if you've got any other ideas to add to it, feel free! There's not too much going on with most of my mod ideas currently, as most are still in a concept state. But, working out how some could be done is definitely providing a boost.

CAM with farms is more restrictive as it is determined what kind of factor they have to grow and depends on stages.

Stage 1 - Stage 3 are the traditional farms.

Stage 4 Are plantations and large farms.

Stage 5 Are the livestock farms

Stage 6 Concerns the timber and fish industry

Stage 7 Are the luxury farms

Stage 8 Are the industrial scale farms

Stage 9 - Stage 10 Are the high-tech and futuristic farms

The problem that many of these ideas lie in a gray area between OpenSC4 and what DLL mods can really do

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

8 hours ago, JoelMk2 said:

... each building only spawns a single farm field type, ...

This part is very easy. In the Building Exemplar for the farm, property 0x29B55F73 is for the Field Lots list. It can have one or more reps of data like this:
  Each_Rep_Value = {
    [1] = "0x00024100"
    [2] = "0x2A6E4309"
    [3] = "0x2A6E431D"
    [4] = "0xAA6E4328"
    [5] = "0x6A6E4332"
    [6] = "0xEA6E4721"
  }

And, ofc,  each of those point to the exemplar of a field lot.

[Simizen 1,098]

6 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

CAM with farms is more restrictive as it is determined what kind of factor they have to grow and depends on stages.

Stage 1 - Stage 3 are the traditional farms.

Stage 4 Are plantations and large farms.

Stage 5 Are the livestock farms

Stage 6 Concerns the timber and fish industry

Stage 7 Are the luxury farms

Stage 8 Are the industrial scale farms

Stage 9 - Stage 10 Are the high-tech and futuristic farms

The problem that many of these ideas lie in a gray area between OpenSC4 and what DLL mods can really do

yeah, I knew the last couple were more for the high tech and futuristic stuff. Even though I've read through it a couple times, I actually forgot that CAM allows for timber industry as an option, so that's certainly interesting to see.

And, yeah, most of the extra stuff is likely in a grey area with all of that, but I really do think that the Building Styles DLL may actually be a possible solution, at the very least, in the short term. I'd personally love for it to be way more dynamic, but, that's going to require a complete rewrite of the game at that point; so the current focus is to see what all we can convince the current structure of the game to do.

I do wonder though, since the last couple stages are hardly utilized, if maybe we could rearrange some of the stuff to be able to fit some of these ideas in? Of course, if needed, the stages could also be increased to 15, alongside the rest of the zones. I'm just not sure what kind of work that would entail if all of that were to happen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another thought had come to me regarding some of this, and that is, I wonder if it's possible to maybe convince the other densities that they're farms? Like, it would probably still rely on the Building Styles DLL, but, basically, if there's a way to make it so that the other two zone types are convinced that they're also farms, then maybe we could move some of this over there instead. Which would allow regular farms, as well as the custom FARM content. Of course, if that is possible, then we likely could do the reverse, convince the farming density zone that it's a Low Density Industrial zone. This would then allow us to further separate the lots found in IRM. Course it's possible that convincing these densities that they're other zone types may require a DLL mod itself. But it would certainly be an interesting thing to look into at least.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

2 minutes ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

yeah, I knew the last couple were more for the high tech and futuristic stuff. Even though I've read through it a couple times, I actually forgot that CAM allows for timber industry as an option, so that's certainly interesting to see.

And, yeah, most of the extra stuff is likely in a grey area with all of that, but I really do think that the Building Styles DLL may actually be a possible solution, at the very least, in the short term. I'd personally love for it to be way more dynamic, but, that's going to require a complete rewrite of the game at that point; so the current focus is to see what all we can convince the current structure of the game to do.

I do wonder though, since the last couple stages are hardly utilized, if maybe we could rearrange some of the stuff to be able to fit some of these ideas in? Of course, if needed, the stages could also be increased to 15, alongside the rest of the zones. I'm just not sure what kind of work that would entail if all of that were to happen.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another thought had come to me regarding some of this, and that is, I wonder if it's possible to maybe convince the other densities that they're farms? Like, it would probably still rely on the Building Styles DLL, but, basically, if there's a way to make it so that the other two zone types are convinced that they're also farms, then maybe we could move some of this over there instead. Which would allow regular farms, as well as the custom FARM content. Of course, if that is possible, then we likely could do the reverse, convince the farming density zone that it's a Low Density Industrial zone. This would then allow us to further separate the lots found in IRM. Course it's possible that convincing these densities that they're other zone types may require a DLL mod itself. But it would certainly be an interesting thing to look into at least.

Building Styles DLL does not modify how zones create and at the same time does not add new zones because many parts are still missing. The Building Styles DLL only modifies the algorithm of how a building based on different nagregation parameters and the selection of styles.

In addition, the farms have different programming from a classic industrial building in that they are connected with the 1x1 title where there are tree props. So it is too complex to create mines and oil wells because you will have the same tilte repeated which looks bad.

Modifying this behavior is still off limits because it most likely depends on the algorithm that manages the zones

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

15 minutes ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

So it is too complex to create mines and oil wells because you will have the same tile repeated which looks bad.

This is assuming the mine or oil well would fit on a 1 x 1 tile, right?

Then in the prop exemplar you could set property 0x4a751ad5 (Prop Random Chance) to about 15% (with the Simulator Date Start at 1 January and the Simulator Date Interval as 365). This way you'd have a random set of them with no discernible pattern. I'm fairly sure someone (maybe @T Wrecks?) said that's how they did an olive tree farm so they'd look natural.

[Ulisse Wolf 4,412]

Just now, CorinaMarie said:

This is assuming the mine or oil well would fit on a 1 x 1 tile, right?

Then in the prop exemplar you could set property 0x4a751ad5 (Prop Random Chance) to about 15% (with the Simulator Date Start at 1 January and the Simulator Date Interval as 365). This way you'd have a random set of them with no discernible pattern. I'm fairly sure someone (maybe @T Wrecks?) said that's how they did an olive tree farm so they'd look natural.

An experiment could be done using this technique so we can document it for people who can exploit this to create oil wells and other type farming & industries

[Simizen 1,098]

2 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

In addition, the farms have different programming from a classic industrial building in that they are connected with the 1x1 title where there are tree props. So it is too complex to create mines and oil wells because you will have the same tilte repeated which looks bad.

yeah, I honestly had a feeling the farms were locked to the 1x1 tiles. That's honestly been my biggest concern since I first had the idea. Cause, if it's locked to 1x1, but we supply 3x3, then the whole thing's just going to be an overall broken mess. If we're able to convince it to build larger lots, that would be absolutely wonderful, and honestly, would make farming way more interesting at that point, regardless of all previous mods.

2 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Building Styles DLL does not modify how zones create and at the same time does not add new zones because many parts are still missing. The Building Styles DLL only modifies the algorithm of how a building based on different nagregation parameters and the selection of styles.

yeah that's true. My thought here was we could basically lock the new FARM types behind different styles. That way players could turn them on/off as needed. But, I also don't doubt that just adding these extra lots would take quite a bit of work regardless of what route we take. Like, even if the Building Styles do work, there may still be other work involved in getting it sorted out the way we'd want. And, of course, just a ton of work overall if the DLL doesn't work in our favor.

And, yeah, I also figured the DLL thing probably wouldn't allow for overriding the way the densities work. If it is possible to utilize DLLs to swap out how the densities work, I fully expect it to be a completely separate one. But, I honestly think it's more along the lines of the same issue we have with attempting to add new zones. Like, we could potentially reuse some and replace what's currently there, but, without a better understanding of the code, we're stuck with whatever we've got (not to mention any hard coded limits).

Spoiler

Of course, all of that said, if we were able to use a DLL mod to swap out the way the zone densities work, there's just an absolute ton of stuff we could do with it. Cause, I know there's been interest in bringing in an extra density for Industrial, but I know there's recently been interest in getting the Commercial lots sorted out based on Service vs Office. I'm not even sure what all else could be added off the top of my head honestly. Maybe potential mixed use zones? Or at the very least, an extra couple for the W2W stuff. But I can't see what else we could do past that really. Again, there's a bunch of work to look into what is even possible (if anything) with the zones that needs to be done before attempting any of this.

 

2 hours ago, Ulisse Wolf said:

Modifying this behavior is still off limits because it most likely depends on the algorithm that manages the zones

yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I am curious as to what all it does when we're able to finally break it down though. Cause I'd be curious to see how it handles the other zone types (res + com) as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A question I'm curious about now, is, how large of a lot is acceptable in the game for growing? So like, let's take an oil well field for example. You'd have say a handful of oil pumps on a decently large lot, and let's say it's tied into either of the higher density Industry zones. How large can a lot be, before the game can't use it? Cause, I know the default logic in the game, is that Residential can go about 4 tiles in, Commercial's typically 3 tiles in, and Industrial's typically 5 tiles in, before there's development issues. Much of this is a carry over from 3K from what I can tell, with the added layer of it allowing deeper development due to custom lots.

So like, is there an overall limit in how large a (growable) lot can be before the game says "nope, can't do it"? Or is it just strictly demand related at that point? Like, I was thinking if the oil field lot was say, 20x20 tiles, idk if that would be too large for the game to handle. Cause initially, before deep diving into it, the farms can make you think "oh, it can go pretty deep" but, they're the exception, and run off of an entirely different set of rules (mainly, they're just spamming a singular 1x1 lot past the initial Anchor). So, I'm not sure if there's like a hard limit to their size, or if virtually anything's allowable.

And, the reason for this is, we could potentially bypass some of the limitations. Like, we know that you can shift/ctrl/alt click the lots to force a direction, and any lot that fits the intended size can grow there, so long as one exists. So, if we were to make a 20x20 oil field, and zoned it out with that kind of facing, would it still grow? It's certainly not perfect, but it's at least an option to see if we can't expand on some of the resource acquisition lots.

[JoelMk2 332]

My testing/playing suggested that you can grow an I-R lot without farm fields... I removed some farm fields from my plugins and some farm lots subsequently grew without creating fields to fill up the zoned area (i.e. the field lot was not found so the field didn't grow and the space remained empty - I'm not sure whether this creates any issues though). So possibly you could use this to create growable 'extraction' industries that don't generate a 'field' of oil wells/whatever. 

I kind of wonder why this needs to be growable though. To get the desired effect using tools/mods/DLLs we already have available could mean:

• Create a building style specific to the type of extractive industry
• Assign some specific lots to that building type 
• In-game, zone a precise area for the desired lot(s) to grow, while the specific building style is activated, and wait for them to develop.

Why not just use ploppable oil wells/mines/quarries (and whatever supporting buildings you want to have) and have fewer steps? I know that in the real world these industries are often privately-owned (i.e. would 'grow') but going through all the steps to get a growable outcome seems like almost as much 'Mayoral micromanagement' as plopping. And policy-makers do have a huge influence on whether, where and how extractive industries can operate IRL too through environmental plans and approvals etc. 

It is possible to create good looking scenes using ploppable lots (with jobs - to be realistic in that sense), then create the rest of the scene with custom lots and/or MMPs to complete the look, e.g. if it's an open-cast mine - terraforming the land to reflect the shape of the mine, plopping machinery, rocks, stockpiles, waste piles etc. Same would be true for oil fields with areas of pipelines and oil pumps? 

When I get some time to play (I'm in the middle of moving house and starting a new job this month...) I plan to do a bit more work on my ideas around segmenting and controlling types of farm development in any case, and adding some forestry stuff. This might be a starting point for more and for some form of mineral industries to be included. 

[Simizen 1,098]

Well, a couple things with it, are:

• there's still an underlying issue regarding ploppable RCI; though I think it's mostly regarding Residentials not working properly
• not everyone would necessarily want a specific location for these types of FARMs

basically, there's likely to be players interested in just having them around, but not necessarily caring what's actually growing there, save for maybe not wanting regular farms. Mostly these are to add more aesthetic value to the cities. But, also, not everyone really wants to sit there and run ploppable lots and decorate every little aspect of a particular lot. Plenty do of course, so ploppables should definitely be made as well imo, but, there's plenty of people who don't care and would rather just let the game grow them.

I personally would rather they grow, as I feel it could be fun to see, and just an overall interesting challenge for me in some respect. But I do see the appeal in the ploppables, even though I, personally, would rather not paint my entire city exactly the way I want it. I like watching stuff grow and change and advance over time as various factors change and adjust. And watching some of these lots change over time as education and technology improves is just something I've always liked.

But, again, I'm certainly not against there being ploppable lots for people that want them. And, as far as I'm concerned, I kind of view them as being a bit of a requirement, so that people can have/enjoy them if they so choose, as I'd rather not outright restrict everyone to one particular play style.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

9 minutes ago, Ryuu Tenno said:

there's still an underlying issue regarding ploppable RCI; though I think it's mostly regarding Residentials not working properly

That's solved now with @smf_16's growify coding and then incorporated into @Null 45's DLLs.

Ofc, you do still have to have a viable economic environment for them to stay healthy.

[Simizen 1,098]

20 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

That's solved now with @smf_16's growify coding and then incorporated into @Null 45's DLLs.

okay, that's awesome!!

Last I could remember there was just an overall issue with it, but I'm very glad that got fixed now.